Christ Sanctuary - 27th September 2026            

There are some books of the Bible that comfort you immensely 

Ecclesiastes isn’t one of them 

The Preacher unsettles you / He rattles your cage

He asks questions / you would rather avoid / Questions about
origin / meaning / morality / justice / suffering / death / and destiny 

Now / we’ve been journeying with the Preacher for the last many weeks

We’ve traced his steps / agonised with him

He’s tried to understand the meaning of life

by pursuing pleasure / wisdom / wealth / knowledge

You could say 

He’s tried materialism / hedonism / existentialism and nihilism 

and all he succeeds in doing is paint himself into a corner 

 

2025 - Apostles Creed - Crucified Dead Buried Descended into Hell

Isaiah 53:1-12    -    14 September 2025

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This morning we come to a most crucial line in the creed / After saying 

“He suffered under Pontius Pilate” / the Creed goes on to say 

“was crucified / died / and was buried / he descended to the dead”

And the death of Jesus is unquestionably the most crucial doctrine for us

* we commemorate it every single Sunday / in the Holy Communion

* every preacher worth his salt / aspires to know nothing 

except Jesus Christ and Him crucified

* each believer hopes that she will never boast about anything

except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ

 

CHRIST SANCTUARY. - 25 AUGUST 2024

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Sloth / to David Attenborough / the sloth it’s a pointy-nosed animal hanging upside down from the branch of a tree / by its two toes the slowest moving mammal / in the rain-forest of South America

But that’s not the sloth / we’re talking about this morning

We’re talking about one of the seven deadly sins
Sloth is a little known sin / probably the least-known of the seven

We see the word “sloth” / we mostly think of laziness
And yes / the Bible does have some strong words about laziness
In fact / it has its own word for a sloth / a rather quaint word
The Bible calls a sloth “a sluggard” / Proverbs 6:6
“Go to the ant / you sluggard / consider its ways and be wise!
And Paul / uses some stern words to warn us about laziness

But the word “sloth” / means more than just laziness

GREED - The Seven Deadly Sins

 

CHRIST SANCTUARY - 7th July 20234

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When you hear the names Jeff Bezos / Mark Zuckerberg / Bill Gates
you hear the sound of money ringing on the till

These are the names of some the riches people on Forbes List

Currently Elon Musk is the top dog sitting on that list at $58 Billion

Now there are almost 200 countries whose Gross National Product
is less than $58 Billion / This means that these rich people
have more money than almost 200 nations / in an entire year

Bill Gates is 68 / If he lives for another 20 years
and he wants to spend all his money before he dies
he would have to spend $2.9 Billion a year
- that’s $7,900,000 every day / or $331,000 per hour

Now / you might not feel so guilty because you think you’re far
from that kind of money but according to the Global Rich List
if you make $70,000 per year you’re in the richest 2.4% of the global population

 

                               CHRIST SANCTUARY    –     9th June 2024            
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If there is one sin / of the Seven we don’t take seriously / it’s gluttony
Conservative Christians make a fuss about homosexuality
but when it comes to gluttony / everyone gets a free pass 
You’ll never see Christians holding up signs saying 
“God Hates Gluttons” / outside all those steakhouses  
It’s true isn’t it / that gluttony has become an acceptable “lifestyle sin”
Ours is a culture of “Supersized” portions 
and we’ve come to accept it as normal 

The Webster’s Dictionary defines a glutton as “one given habitually 
to greedy and voracious / eating and drinking” 
“having a huge appetite / ravenous / insatiable”

 

                                             CHRIST SANCTUARY       21 April 2024

I’ll be preaching seven sermons on the Seven Deadly Sins spread over the year finishing with the last one on the 7th December. If it is true that “sin has a thousand faces” the face of sin  we’re most familiar with are what’s called Seven Deadly Sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride.

These seven made it to the hit-list not because they were  the most gruesome but because they were doorway sins; they were sins through which other sins sneak through. The seven deadly sins were catalogued by Thomas Aquinas  a mediaeval theologian and I will be preaching them in the order Dante has it in his Inferno.

 

                    Jonah 4:1-11 The Idolatrous Prophet 30th May 2021

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If you and I were writing the book of Jonah there wouldn’t be a chapter 4

A million people repented! What more is there to say!

We would have expected the book to have ended at 3:10

Which says “When God saw how they turned from their evil way

God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them

Perhaps, at most, if you must have a Jonah 3:11

– there’s no such verse in the Bible of course but if you must have that

you could have: “And Jonah sailed back to his homeland rejoicing”

But that’s not the case / We do have a Jonah chapter 4